Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War I

Engel, Barbara Alpern

doi:10.1086/245591

Cited by 78 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…During the First World War, “the fact that the scarcity or high price of items such as meat, soap, calico, and leather, or even sugar, prompted the lower classes to rebel suggests the extent to which popular expectations had risen by the out‐break of the war. Sugar was a relative late comer to the diet of the peasantry, but by the early twentieth century many peasants had adopted the practice of consuming it regularly with tea” (Alpern Engel, 1997, p. 719).…”

Section: Consumption Poverty and Dignified Life In Modern Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumption and Dignified Life: A Socio‐Historic Restatement

Brito

2023

Sociology Lens

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This article provides an examination of the concept of consumption within the fields of sociology and economic historiography. Two theoretical approaches towards this phenomenon exist in the literature: the consumer society as a characteristic element of late capitalism in the 20th century and the society of consumption as a fundamental aspect in the historical origins of modern society between the 17th and 19th centuries. The article challenges one of the central premises of the first approach, which suggests that mass consumption contaminates a previously given society. Instead, I argue that the expansion of a consumer society during the early phase of capitalism created the conditions for the emergence of an emancipatory ideal of dignified life associated with a basic standard of consumption. This concept served as a historical precursor to the contemporary notion of absolute poverty.

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Section: Consumption Poverty and Dignified Life In Modern Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consumption and Dignified Life: A Socio‐Historic Restatement

Brito

2023

Sociology Lens

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“…Baladi bread is thus one medium through which the public assesses the legitimacy of the ruling regime. When people's expectations for their staple food are not met it can be a source of political unrest, as bread riots throughout history have demonstrated (Thompson ; Engel ; Martinez ). In 1977, the government's attempts to raise the price of bread resulted in two days of riots around the country, with protestors attacking shops, government buildings, and police stations.…”

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Care and Conveyance: Buying Baladi Bread in Cairo

Barnes¹,

Taher²

2019

Cult. Anthropol.

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The streets are already busy, despite the early hour. Minibuses jostle for space alongside bicycles, cars, and motorbikes, the fumes of idling vehicles filling the air. Honking horns punctuate a background noise of Quranic recitations playing from radios, pop music broadcasting from a store, and a babble of animated conversation. Vendors are setting up their stands for the day, peeling layers of decay off cabbages and lettuce, stacking oranges one atop another. A small hut stands by the side of the road, its window open at the front. The booth is nondescript, unmarked by any sign, with no produce on display or smells emanating from it. Within the darkened space, a woman sits behind a counter. A customer approaches. "I'll have a pound's worth, please," he says, placing several coins on the counter and handing over a plastic card. 1 The woman puts the card into a small handheld machine and then reaches toward the shelves that line both sides of the booth. She starts pulling down loaves of round, flat bread, placing twenty on the bran-covered counter, and handing back the card. The customer picks up the bread, feeling the loaves and glancing briefly at each one in turn. He sets aside four loaves, which the woman exchanges for four new ones. He then moves to one side CARE AND CONVEYANCE: Buying Baladi Bread in Cairo CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGYCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 34:3 418and spreads out his bread on the hood of a car that is parked nearby. After a few minutes, he stacks the now-cooled bread into neat piles and places it in the plastic bag he has brought with him. He departs, the bulging bag of bread in one hand, smaller bags of beans, greens, and tomatoes in the other.This simple transaction in a Cairo neighborhood in the winter of 2015 might appear to hold little significance. Underlying the transaction, though, is a set of social, material, political, and economic relationships that reaches far beyond those of a man buying bread. The moment of card-money-bread exchange marks an interface between a government subsidy system, private business, staple food, and the millions of people who eat this food every day. The bread the customer is purchasing is a particular kind of bread, known as baladi bread, which is subsidized by the government and eaten by the majority of Egyptians (according to the government's statistics, around 85 percent) on a daily basis (see figure 1). 2 The card the customer hands over is a ration card, which entitles him to five loaves of baladi bread a day for each member of his family. The money he pays covers the cost of twenty loaves at the subsidized price of 5 piasters a loaf, a tenth of the price of other kinds of bread (less than half a U.S. cent per loaf). 3 The bakery he is buying from is private, but the content and size of the baladi bread it produces are regulated by the government. The way he is handling the bread, checking it for defects, Figure 1. Baladi bread with beans and mulokhiya (jute mallow). Photo by Mariam Taher. CARE AND CONVEYANCE

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2020

A Companion to the Russian Revolution

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Not by Bread Alone: Subsistence Riots in Russia during World War I

Cited by 78 publications

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Consumption and Dignified Life: A Socio‐Historic Restatement

Consumption and Dignified Life: A Socio‐Historic Restatement

Care and Conveyance: Buying Baladi Bread in Cairo

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